Howell High School Advanced Drama Students Hold Shakespeare Workshop for Freshman
12/8/16 – Recently several Howell High School students in Amanda Malo’s advanced drama class conducted a Shakespeare Workshop for the school’s freshman class. The interactive workshop taught the freshman about Shakespeare’s works and his writing style. The goal of the workshop was to help the freshmen gain a greater understanding of Shakespeare as they prepare to read “Romeo and Juliet.”
The idea for the Shakespeare workshop came from Karli
Laurian, Howell High School ninth grade English language arts teacher and Howell High School alumnus. “I had done a workshop similar to this with actors from the Stratford Players Company in Stratford Canada. I really liked the idea of having the kids get up and move around and work with the text in a different way than they are used to,” said
Laurian. “I am one of Malo’s former students, so I knew that she was great with this kind of thing. I teamed up with her and asked if she would be willing to bring some of her students over to get our kids to experience the text in more of the acting way instead of just sitting in class and reading it.”
“I think it is a really great opportunity just to work with the freshman and introduce them to Shakespeare and the theater world. I think this is a passion for us, the advanced drama students, so being able to share that passion with younger individuals is just so great. They are upcoming, so if we can share a little bit of what we have learned from Mrs. Malo then they can grow into something bigger and better,” said Aiden Pressel, Howell High School advanced drama student.
“Conducting the workshop was a really interesting experience. You really learn how to teach. We work with the school’s drama one and drama two classes, but that is different because they are in the atmosphere and most of them choose to be in the atmosphere. With this, it is kind of like you are trying to convince them and persuade them to enjoy it and you have to get them to open up. I think we succeeded with a lot of them,” said Nola Wilson, Howell High School advanced drama student.
The Shakespeare Workshop was attended by all of the ninth grade English language arts classes.